What is a power meter? Do I need a power meter? Which power meter is best for me and what…

On the automatic production line, jigs had not been holding the strain gauge component in place and then too much glue was being applied.

“The strain gauge is the most expensive component of the power meter and we always knew that bonding it would be the most difficult part of production,” says Drummond.

Next week production will ramp up as line workers are trained. By the end of the month Drummond expects the factory to turning out 500 a week.

“The reality is that it’s going to take the rest of this month and all of June to make enough products for all of our backers,” says Drummond, “I know that’s not what people want to hear but I’ve got to be realistic.”

Max Glaskin is an award-winning freelance journalist who tweets about cycling and science as @CyclingScience1.

He is the author of Cycling Science (published by Frances Lincoln UK, Chicago University Press USA, and seven other languages).

Michael

Advertising heh, kickstarter and indigogo are not shops.

Perhaps you should go and see how many times Garmin vector were delayed – to suggest this few month delay is indicative of a scam is just nonsensical.

Wise up.

Hunter Hao

Cute strawman there.

Limits themselves have expressed the shipping date, and then postponed it, and then postponed it, and then postponed it, and smeared nonsensical lies on top of it, everywhere in between.

You don’t need to have a clue about advertising, or business, or communication, or law, to understand that as deception, do you.

Or did you need that to be explained in further detail?

Michael

Half a year. Sheesh, like I said people who have no clue about product development and think they’ve preordered something from a shop.

Hunter Hao

It’s now been well over half a year since customers (sorry, investors) were to receive their units. And yet, there’s been not ONE video , or picture , EVER , of ANY working unit – prototype or otherwise – ANYWHERE.

If it looks like a duck, and talks like a duck, and walks like a duck… it’s probably a Nigerian scam.

On reflection, DCR hasn’t shown to be wrong on this subject. You yourself sound a bit like this Drummond fella

CW keeps erasing the old quotes, which is disconcerting, but it seems as if “positive” was indeed a little too … positive.

Michael

You might be. I bought a stages power meter last month

Michael

No it doesn’t “sound like” I work for anyone in particular at all.

I mean, ok you’re probably still drunk from last night, but the post you replied to talks about me buying a stages power meter and how stages power meters, unlike limits, are now in 2nd generation, have been proven and are, therefore, a better bet right now.

So, c’mon, up your game a bit. Try a bit harder.

This article (and discussion) is a month old now, not sure why CW have bumped it again.

Insy

Michael it sounds like you work for Limits, I’m sure you have better things to do than reply to an article.

It doesn’t get around the fact they continually lie said they had a working prototype when they didn’t way back when it started. No reviews from the seemingly independent reviews have seen the light of day and a real power file or a video of the working unit to add to the list.

kdviner70

Thing is they have not reported any results from any independent testers. For all we know the power meter may not be up to snuff

kevv

@depicus:disqus

if that’s the best reply you’ve got you should quit… now.

Stevo

That looks like a fundamental flaw in the design, if the picture at the head of the article is anything to go on.

Wilson

Nope, Q factor

KING

The amount of hubhub and hyperbole around these power meters in these comments is incredible. One thing is certain, if these meters are accurate & can be easily shared between bikes… for the price point they are stating – we’ll all be riding with them.

Its telling too that Brim launched their Kickstarter at least a year after they had prototype units in the hands of 3rd parties. I happen to ride Speedplays so I’m a backer there, and have every confidence I’ll actually get one as well 🙂

Jdog

I haven’t been able to read any of the graphs. They’re tiny jpegs. I wish they’d have released some data. And a picture of the bloody thing on a bike.

Malaprop

4 months is very significant. Since I have been following it there have been another 3 – 4 low cost competitors to the market. At least they’ll delay fence sitters from purchase, at worst it’ll cause a down ward price dump after having their cost increased.

Paul Jakma

It’s not USP, because Brim Brothers have a cleat based powermeter. Speedplay Zero, and BB at the moment will not certify it to be accurate with any other Speedplay pedal (even if cleat physically works), but Speedplay do have pedals suitable for MTB..

Oh, and DCRainmaker has actually seen and cycled with their powermeter. It exists. They’re starting limited-volume production…

Michael

Once again Richard you’re being disingenuous. Unless that is you have some evidence to share about the Nigerian origins of the company

Oh, please. He said their team lacked industry experience, and they did. He said that they wouldn’t hit their dates, and they didn’t. He said that they’d lied about the current state of the project when they launched their Indiegogo campaign, and they had. For that matter he mentioned that nobody had yet brought a PM to market in the kind of timeframe they’d proposed at the time, and indeed they hadn’t. Until you can actually back up your claims with some minimal facts, feel free to consider this conversation over.

Michael

His whole article is in the process of being proven incorrect. I can only suggest you read the posts you replied to, to see specific references.

Are CW writing that Shimano 105 DI2 is a scam and “all Shimano have to do is demonstrate it to CW” or show them pictures?

Do you demand that Apple show you the products they are working on or otherwise compare them to Nigerian scammers?

Sheesh, get over your entitled self. Perhaps you should have studied how startups, companies and product development works before clicking on the link to give them money.

The story here, if there is one, is that crowdfunding sites need to educate the people using them about exactly what it is they are doing when they choose to hand over their money.

There are crowd funding sites now that use money to loan to businesses and others to buy actual equity – these operators have significant disclaimers and information that people may lose their money and the FSA are there in the background too. This is lacking somewhat from things like kickstarter and indiegogo – and I think the issue is really that people think they’ve pre-ordered a power meter from a store. That isn’t the case.

Back in May 2015 they said, of the Spokes team, “They have not raced with a unit (LIMITS is a training tool not for racing). They have been testing alpha units for us.” So basically exactly the same message today as we heard during the campaign launch. Maybe this time its true, but as we’ve discovered it certainly wasn’t true back then.

To be accurate, in http://www.dcrainmaker.com/2015/11/limits-responds-still.html after they slammed him for the article that you posted, he did call it a scam, using the definition: “to get something, such as money, by deceiving someone.” Its been clear enough that this also happened. Hopefully they will eventually deliver a good product anyway.

Just to be clear, I was the guy who got an email from Gordon Elliot in May of last year that said that Limits had, and I quote, “been testing Alpha units for us.” As we all know now, that was a flat-out lie. Please point out anything specific that DCR said that was factually incorrect at the time or has been proven to be incorrect now. They certainly raised a lot of their money through deception.

BTW, the most damning thing DCR claimed in the original November post before they attacked him was, “And I have no doubt they’ll succeed eventually, but I suspect that in the highly unlikely event they ship consumers something this December, that it won’t be accurate or reliable. But I suspect they won’t ship anything this year.”

They also claimed (in the DCR article you referenced) to have test units on bikes back in October. From later posts, that also appears to have been a fabrication.

LIMITS could still solve this whole problem by letting anyone – even CW (who’s been very kind to them, updating stories in place for example) – visit them and actually take a ride on a bike that has a prototype unit on it. They claim to have them, after all. Just one outside member of the media seeing the unit in action would make a world of difference in their credibility.

For that matter, simply doing things like showing pictures of their test rigs actually in their office in Scotland rather than stock photos from the manufacturers site in their bi-weekly updates would help. They may not be a complete scam in the end, but they sure are doing their damnedest to act like one.

Michael

Really? Because there’s medicine, quantum mechanics, maths and 200 European languages that are all very good and I’m betting you don’t understand them.

Sorry to burst your bubble if you thought you were some kind of global barometer of comprehension. Your ego will recover in time.

Let me spell it out for you. Imagine someone sat at home doing nothing saying “Man on the moon? Heh, no way, that won’t happen, it’s a scam!” (still exist today ironically) and another sitting there saying “Limits power meters? They are a nigerian scam..they’ll never do it!”

Then roll forward to when it’s done and you see both of them as the evidence that they are wrong mounts up decide that a short delay vindicates their early cynicism.

And that’s it. That’s the analogy, it’s about equating the delay.

It’s not about rockets, or pioneering or Neil Armstrong and the Limits developer wearing the same brand of underpants. None of that is being compared or equated – it’s about armchair critics citing an insignificant delay to justify writing complete nonsense a few months ago about this project and instead of saying “Hmm, perhaps we were wrong” they are writing emotive titles like “finally gets into production” as though it’s dragged on for decades like Duke Nukem forever or something.

Michael

There was no comparison with the moon landing.

The analogy was about a commentator, having done nothing himself, stating that it wouldn’t happen or, as with both the moon landing and limits, claiming it’s a scam or fake – and then when it does clinging to his previous negative comments simply because of a small delay.

So yeah, the moon landing’s massive achievement compared with a delay was deliberately used as a device to exaggerate just how ridiculous these commentators are. i.e it was the exact opposite of comparing the moon landings with building a power meter (albeit if you believed the nonsense a few power meter manufacturers persuaded DC rainmaker to write you probably would believe developing a power meter is harder to do than landing on the moon)

Schools really need to teach the concept of analogy better – it doesn’t mean the writer is equating all aspects of one thing with the other. It’s amazing how many misunderstand this.

Sam Andrew

Lol the comparison with the moon landing is a joke right? these guys are years behind everyone else, they’re hardly pioneering!! The people who get the first version of this product are essentially the beta testers. Why anyone would want something that increases Q factor; it’s such a flawed design.

Adam Beevers

But this is discipline independent. All of the other power meters are embedded in components that are designed for a particular discipline.

Pre-production models are already being tested by members of a Scottish cycling club, Spokes, in Spain.

“Team members have been using them during their training but they were preparing for their race season ahead and getting the kind of data we need wasn’t their priority,” says Drummond. “So now some older, more experienced riders in Spokes are putting them through their paces and we’re getting more useful data.”

Did you read the post before posting or skip to the end?

jeffoffline

the skepticism is well warranted…
“Given our good progress, we’re now positive and can confirm that we will start shipping the first units this month. ”
literally two sentences later..
“However, we are confident that we will be in a position to ship.”
In the span of 30 seconds of typing they went from positive to confident…
that doesn’t even take into consideration that so far all the graphs they’ve published have been shown limits to be inaccurate and they still have no third party testing… even if they ship this month but it won’t be an accurate power meter… hopefully for the people that ordered these it’s something that can be corrected via firmware updates vs requiring a redesign.

Michael

Sheesh. When a company designs, develops and makes a new product they don’t start a production run to make the first one.

Michael

I don’t think you understood the analogy TBH.

Michael

Most power meters can be moved. Admittedly there are different compatibility issues depending on how the device measures power – hubs, cranks, pedals etc.

So, yeah, their device seems better from that pov compared with the others, but I don’t think it’s entirely unique.

Michael

He said they were a Nigerian scam and other things of that ilk.

Sheesh, don’t defend the article and not with lies, Richard.

I think you should follow the link in this story to cycling weekly’s other story and then on to rainmaker’s article and read it carefully before claiming ” the criticism was completely and unmistakably correct” – it was far from that.

Suggesting that a delay in developing this product somehow vindicates the hatchet job that rainmaker wrote is disingenuous to the nth degree.

I note lots of sycophants egging him on at the bottom of it too, and this site linking to it. These were bad enough.

The guy lost all credibility with me after I read it. Especially because, as I said, he always waffled on talking about “magazines that wrote about things they hadn’t tested” and then did exactly that.

Adam Beevers

Isn’t their USP the fact that it can be swapped between bikes very easily? If it proves to work, then I’d love one to swap between my road and mountain bikes.

It’s like saying to Neil Armstrong “Ok, you landed on the moon but it took you 6 months longer than you said, so our armchair naysayers were right!” – No, they weren’t right or useful.

Michael, Ray never said they couldn’t do it, he said that their delivery timeline was unrealistic (remember, back in November they were still swearing blind that they were less than a month away from full production). As it turns out though, since their schedule slipped by over 35%, the criticism was completely and unmistakably correct.

Whether or not the meter proves accurate in its first revision remains to be seen.

Your analogy is somewhat flawed in that the US had the will and budget to get to the moon but there was nothing to say these startups could not have pissed away the £450,000 as many have done. Indeed Limits still hasn’t independently had their device verified, while I really hope they can pull it off, it is still not a done deal.

Howmanyjackos

So they haven’t made or tested one yet?

Michael

“Those doubts were well-founded. Since the initial announcement, the first delivery dates have been pushed back by four months.”

Well, hardly. 4 months is neither here nor there.

It’s like saying to Neil Armstrong “Ok, you landed on the moon but it took you 6 months longer than you said, so our armchair naysayers were right!” – No, they weren’t right or useful.

So far as I’ve seen these “power meter experts” have largely been companies that sell more expensive products manipulating the ever more narcissistic DC rainmaker into writing missives full of non sequiturs and innuendo to discredit a product he’s never seen (in spite of him waffling at length that he doesn’t write about stuff he’s never seen) It was an awful article.

That, together with a lot of people who throw money at indigogo ideas without realising it isn’t pre-ordering from a store getting their knickers in a twist instead of being patient. If you wanted a power meter this week, get a stages or vector 2 etc.

I was never going to pre-order one of these via indiegogo. I’d just been waiting for them to appear. As such, a 4 month delay was really nothing and it was quite comical seeing the hoohar and fuss as “journalists” wrote their opinions about a startup company trying to develop and deliver its first product as though they were some kind of scam or as though a few months slippage was the end of the world.

If it is delayed for another 4 months it won’t be a big deal. Unless your doctor gave you 6 months to live or something – I can see your panic then “Mary, I’ll die without having ever tested my limits power meter! Sue indigogahhhhhh…..beeeeeeeeeeeeep”

That said, although the product is interesting, it seems to me, (somewhat like the 4iii) it’s only USP is “being cheaper than other products on the market” – and I’m not sure that’s such a great selling point for something I want to put on my bikes and use for years.

Hence I just ordered a Stages 2nd gen for my new bike. The LBS were offering 10% of the purchase price of the bike in accessories so I got quite a big discount off the power meter (and all the usual crap you might get instead like bottle cages, tool bags, mini pumps etc I’ve already got anyway)

I think Stages have been through the process of teething troubles, failing glue, failing seals and battery covers with their first gen. Hence I’m not expecting significant problems with it. It seems tried and tested now and that, to me, is worth a premium over a cheaper power meter of yet unknown reliability.

I suspect that limits will have its issues although I’ve no doubt they’ll get a product out the door because, in spite of all the nonsense written at the behest of the existing players, the fundamentals of a power meter are already known. There are even hobbyists online modifying cranks to add strain gauges and boards with ant+ to create a working power meter. Hence the idea this was some kind of vapourware that wouldn’t work and so on was ridiculous.

The questionable things are more like whether they’ll create a unit that’s robust enough to survive on a bike and whether they can get reliable, reasonably accurate power measurement in all temperatures and conditions.

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